Veteran of the Psychic Wars
by xahra99
Summary: Written for the Mass Effect kink meme. Jacob/Miranda, for the prompt: 'They're still sleeping with each other and they're both convinced it's just for the sex when really it's not.' One-shot. Complete. Rated M.


Veteran of the Psychic Wars

A Mass Effect 2 fan fiction by xahra99

Jacob/Miranda, for the masskink prompt: 'They're still sleeping with each other and they're both convinced that it's just for the sex when it's really not.'

When she could move again, Miranda rolled off Jacob and pulled on her bra. She leant over to check her Cerberus pager, shivering slightly in the over air-conditioned room. There were no messages. She hadn't expected any. They were a bare two hours out from Ilium. Miranda had spent half the time debriefing the crew.

She'd spent the _other _half debriefing Jacob.

The sex had been good. It was always good. Miranda had never been promiscuous, but Jacob was by far the best of the few lovers she'd had. He was attractive, discreet and loyal, and she knew that he found her sexually alluring.

_Of course he does_, she thought bitterly. _He can't help it_.

She stared bleakly at her reflection in the mirrored window of the _Normandy. _She looked twenty-three, but she was the wrong side of thirty. Her hair color, eye color and skin tone had been selected from a catalogue, her waist, bust and hip measurements plotted by a computer according to an algorithm used for designing small plastic dolls. She'd had satiety implants inserted so she wouldn't lose her perfect figure and her healing accelerated so she wouldn't scar. Her biotic powers were tuned to breaking point. Her reflexes were twice as fast as any normal human and her IQ topped one-eighty on the Wechsler scale. All of it bought and paid for with her daddy's credit card.

Miranda usually enjoyed her abilities to the full. She had boasted about her biotic powers and her physical constitution to anyone who would listen. Her father's gifts had served her well. Assuming she wasn't killed in action, they would ensure she continued to function for many more years.

Right now, she hated them.

"You're very quiet." Jacob said sleepily from behind her. He reached out and touched the small of her back. "What're you thinking?"

Miranda shook her head.

"Miranda?" Jacob asked again. His voice was concerned.

Miranda said nothing. There was nothing to gain by dwelling on her family's past mistakes.

Jacob sighed. "We should talk."

"Not now." Miranda told him.

Jacob continued as if Miranda had not spoken. It annoyed her. "You know, sometimes I wonder if we've got anything in common except sex and Cerberus," he said.

Miranda studied Jacob's reflection in the window. "Maybe we haven't," she said. "Maybe it's just another way to burn off steam."

"Then you've got a lot of steam to burn off." Jacob rolled over and sat up. "Seriously, though, is because of Ilium? That must have been pretty hard on you, facing up to your dad again." He gave a lopsided, hesitant smile. "That's another thing we got in common. We've both got fucked up families."

The mission had been hard, but Miranda wasn't about to admit it. "I have a family," she said carelessly, watching Jacob's face close off in the reflection on the window because she didn't have the guts or the heart to turn around and face him in person. "Yours is dead. That's different. "

Jacob didn't say anything for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. "That's... more than usually tactless. Even for you."

"Then don't make this into something it's not," she retorted. "You know what this is. Don't get personal."

"Don't get personal?" Jacob raised his eyebrows. "Miranda, I don't know if you noticed, but we just had _sex_. It's a little late for that."

She shook her head and reached for her pants. "Sex is just sex. And if you can't deal with the fact it's just sex, then it'll have to stop."

"Why?"

"Stop asking me questions."

"I will when you start answering them." His eyes narrowed. "Is this about the rank thing? Because-"

"It's not about rank."

"Then what's it about?" Jacob sounded frustrated. "I already told Shepard we used to have a-a _thing_. The crew won't be too surprised."

"It's not that-" For once, Miranda was lost for words. "It's-it's complicated."

_"_So make it simple_."_

_Yes_, she thought. _Simple_.

They had started out simple, back on Lazarus. Something had changed since they'd swapped the facility for the _Normandy_. The ship's lack of privacy and tight operating schedule had spurred both of them on to greater inventiveness. They'd spent longer and longer in Miranda's quarters: in Jacob's bunk. In the engineering bay, when nobody was around. In the communications room, the observation deck, the medical laboratory.

It was only a matter of time before somebody found out.

The question was, Miranda thought, whether she wanted to let them. She had no problem with sex in general. However, secret sex with a subordinate was hardly her style.

"We've been friends a long time," she said. "Maybe we should go back to being friends. That's simple."

"We've got too much history to be simple." Jacob said.

Miranda said nothing.

Jacob shook his head. "You're really telling me that you don't want to do this anymore?" He moved closed, crawling on hands and knees across the bed. His right hand splayed out across her hip and moved down the inside of her thigh. His ebony dark skin contrasted with perfect creamy flesh that had cost Miranda's father seven thousand credits a square centimeter.

Miranda shuddered and pulled away. She shook her head again and snatched up a corner of the sheet to cover her hips.

Jacob pulled back. He sat on the bed behind Miranda with his hand a fraction from her hip. She could feel the heat radiating from his skin. "This isn't like you."

"You don't know me," Miranda snapped.

He leaned forwards. "Then tell me what's up. If I don't know you it's not for want of trying."

Miranda shook her head again. Her stomach flipped, turning barrel rolls under the taut skin of her abdomen. She wiped a single bead of sweat from her forehead with hands that trembled so minutely no observer could possibly have noticed and reached for her coverall.

Jacob reached out with his foot and flipped her uniform away to the opposite end of the bed. Miranda bared her teeth. Jacob leaned across the bed to block her. It was beneath her dignity to scramble for her clothes, and she knew he knew it too. She let the sheet drop and sat with her chin in the air, magnificent in her nakedness.

Jacob reclined on the bed between Miranda and her clothes and regarded her with sloe-dark eyes."I know you care," he said. "Sex without feeling just isn't this good."

"How would you know?"

"I just know."

"It's all fake," she said bitterly.

"Fake?" Jacob asked. His eyes narrowed. He was very still.

"Everything you see," she said. "This body, this skin. I'm older than you know."

Jacob sighed. His body lost its awful stillness. "You're thirty-seven, even if you don't look it. Hardly _old_. Besides, it doesn't matter."

"Then it should. I'm too old for you."

"Seven years isn't much of an age gap." Jacob said. "Is that it? I've known about your father for years. It doesn't bother me."

"It bothers _me,_" she said.

"Is this because of Oriana?"

"This is about my father. I only look this way because he bought and paid for me. I only behave this way because he paid for _that_. The best training, the perfect genes-I had it all. Without him, I'd be nothing. Without him, you wouldn't even look at me." She sighed. "And I hate him. I'd pay back everything, if I could. But how can I? It's part of me."

"I hate your father too. But I can't hate what he created. You're beautiful, Miranda, but it's not just that. You think I'd still be here if you were just a talking doll? You're not his. You're-_you_. And I never knew that you felt this way about yourself."

"Not many people do," Miranda said dryly. She waited for him to get up and leave but he showed no sign of moving. If anything, he leaned a little closer. His voice was quiet enough that she had to tilt her head backwards to hear it.

"I told you it doesn't matter."

Miranda's breath hissed through her gritted teeth. "I don't believe you."

"Well, how about I prove it?" he invited. "I'm not going anywhere. And you shouldn't either."

Miranda frowned. A fraction of a second later she felt a deft touch across her breast. She looked across at Jacob, who hadn't moved. He had dropped his head to study the creases of the sheets with uncommon concentration. A small smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

Miranda didn't say anything. Her body answered for her. She'd never used her own biotic powers in sex before, and neither had Jacob. They'd never needed to.

_Of course_, she thought, _if I'd known it would be this good, I might have researched the topic myself._

Jacob's touch dipped between Miranda's thighs. She gasped. Spine arching, she looked over at Jacob.. He hadn't moved a muscle.

She gritted her teeth. "Stop it."

Jacob grinned. "What?"

"You know what." Miranda hissed. The touch of energy between her legs redoubled and she gasped, her spine straightening, her hands twisting in the sheets. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror; knees spread to reveal the dark valley between her thighs, her high breasts cupped in her black lace bra, her choker tight around her throat. Her bra strap slipped down her shoulder and she reached up to slide it on. As she moved her hand, invisible fingers grazed her nipple and sent a spasm of delicious energy coursing through her body.

There was a hint of Jacob's smile in his voice. "Do you really want me to stop?'

Miranda shook her head. She could not speak. She caught the eyes of her reflection in the mirror and saw Jacob's mirror image watching her. His eyes were wide, his lips parted. She wondered what he saw.

Whatever it was, it was enough to make Jacob reach out and touch her with his hands as well as his biotics. He moved closer and then closer still, until he ended up with his legs splayed out around her hips and his hands cupping her breasts. Miranda leaned back to allow him better access and felt his rock hard abs against her spine. She tilted her head to watch them both in the window and reached up to touch his hair. She felt the flicker of a kiss on her throat as she did so, even though his mouth was busy tracing kisses on her shoulder.

"I didn't know you could do that."

"I thought it was time to spice things up a bit."

"I'd say you succeeded," she said, and reached out with her own, subtly different talents.

Jacob gasped.

Miranda smiled.

She gained in confidence as their bodies tangled. She knew Jacob, after all. She'd known him a long time. His biotics were only another part of him, as hers were an extension of her own psyche. It felt just as natural, she discovered, to touch him with her mind as with her hands.

It was all over far too soon for Miranda. She closed her eyes as she came, not wanting to see her own expression in the window's reflection as she jerked and gasped. Jacob stopped as soon as she had finished, and Miranda smoothed her hand over his shoulder.

"I've got all night," he said in response to the question she hadn't asked, "And you enjoyed yourself."

"Certainly," she said.

They both hesitated for a second, and then Miranda said 'So if you want to stay-" and Jacob nodded. Miranda flicked the air-conditioning off and curled up on the crumpled sheets, and Jacob lay beside her. They didn't talk, content in one another's company, and after a while, she heard his breathing slide off into the steady rhythm of sleep.

Miranda felt safe.

It was a strange emotion, she thought, given that they were on a suicide mission. It was stranger still that Jacob, with his excellent but human reflexes and skills, would make her feel that way. There was nothing Jacob could handle that Miranda couldn't protect herself from. Still in Jacob's arms, she felt safe.

Miranda closed her eyes. There was no noise in the cabin apart from the muffled sound of footsteps from the lower decks, and nothing to see through the window save the rapid movement of stars as the Normandy forged ahead to her next mission. Miranda imagined clouds and blue skies, cityscapes, the barren surfaces of planets. They'd land to fight another day, but right now, she felt safe. Safe, and happy, and the latter emotion was rare enough for Miranda that she basked in it.

_Maybe it isn't just for the sex_, she thought as Jacob's quiet breathing lulled her into slumber.

_Maybe._

_Finis._

You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars

I've been living on the edge so long

Where the winds of limbo roar

And I'm young enough to look at

And far too old to see

All the scars are on the inside

I'm not sure if there's anything left of me

Blue Oyster Cult: Veteran of the Psychic Wars


End file.
